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Saturday, November 13, 2010

Just about 2 months ago, I read a few Researches on lying, including Men Lie six times a day and twice as much as women, people lie more on the phone than by email and today while searching for those articles to link them for you, I read, people lie more in email than handwritten letters. The latter two didn't surprise me any bit. In fact, I'd have told you so before reading these. Although it's easier to lie in email, people certainly lie more on the phone. I'm sure there are more reasons but one reason is that many lies are told when replying instantly. When people have time to think, they consider that the truth won't hurt. When they have to reply instantly, sometimes they lie to save themselves even if the offence is small.

I've found a sudden interest in catching lies through TV series Lie to Me. I started watching it about a week ago. Some of the reasoning given in the show about catching lies made me wonder if that happens in reality too. Today, I looked it up on Wikipedia and found many things related to it, notably, Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage, Third Edition on which the show is based. I read some pages on Amazon for free already. The writer, psychologist Paul Ekman, says that psychologists and psychiatrists are no better than other people in detecting lies. And you don't need any training to detect them either. Of course, not all lies can be caught. The thing about lying is that if you lie a lot, the people you lie to, are more likely to doubt you. But if you lie a lot, you practice lying which makes you a better liar. Though I think lying a lot helps the lie catcher more than liars.

Lie to Me is interesting but given how humans feel and think while watching TV, we are far more likely to learn from a book than the TV series, which is fictional anyway. But hey, there are ways to learn from everything. The best thing considering them, analysing everything, not just reading and watching.